Hey y'all! I'm Cynthia Liu, one of the newsletter writers. Even though we have only had four days of classes, we have already gone through a lot. Let's take a look at what Cluster 7 has been up to this week : )

On the first day, our professor, Dr. Silberman, reviewed our project for the next four weeks: create an Autonomous Surface Vehicle (ASV) to survey a lake. He divided us into six groups, each focusing on one of three survey parts. The vehicle groups are responsible for making a boat to tow the a science buoy,  the science groups are responsible for creating a science buoy to survey the lake, and the database group is responsible for creating a database to analyze on the shore. 

Once he gave us our materials, we were off! We spent the first session doing parts inventory, though we were all quite confused because we were yet to learn what each part does. 

After lunch, our teacher fellow, Mike, taught us how to CAD, which stands for Computer Aided Design with Cluster 11. He taught us the basics by walking us through modeling a tissue box and Pac-Man. 

On the second day, we attended the COSMOS wide ethics presentation, where we were taught the fundamentals of ethics in STEM (along with some fancy terms - deontology). We were later introduced to the Ethics Essay Competition, where each of us will write an essay based on a topic chosen by our cluster. After much deliberation, we decided to write about the ethical issues of the Salton Sea, which has morphed from paradise to wasteland. I'm excited to see what we all come up with!

In the afternoon, we learned how to 3D print! We used PrusaSlicer to change to prepare the model for 3D printing and making sure each layer was fine before printing.

On Wednesday we started the day with a lecture that talked about everything that we would be doing in groups especially the groups that would take control of the Unmanned Water Autonomous Vehicle (UAV), this we called the USV's. There are 4 groups, and each group is responsible and each group is responsible for building an UAV. The lecture was essential and it was thanks to it that now the cluster is able to understand  and know what were doing. After lunch, we gathered the list of the materials that are necessary to assemble the (UAV) and listed them on a list provided by Mike, the really chill teacher fellow, and placed labels on them so they would not be mistake by other groups. This finalized the day and gave us more work to return to in the following day.

Residential Life

In addition to our classes, we also have been adjusting to college dorm life! Since we are all rising seniors, it's pretty nice to have a taste of the college lifestyle before we start our college eras next year.